Lone parents in jobs double up in less than a decade

The longest-term study of lone-parent families shows the number in work has
almost doubled in a decade.

The British Lone Parent Cohort and their Children 1991 to 2001, just
published by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), shows that of a sample
of 940 lone parents, just 29 per cent were in employment in 1991. Ten years
later, that figure had risen to 56 per cent.

The report’s authors, Alan Marsh and Sandra Vegeris, said: "Two-thirds
of the families we followed had done well. They had entered or remained in
employment, or they had settled with a partner who worked, or both.

"Fears in the early 1990s that they heralded a large body of
lone-parent families bound for long-term dependence on the state have not been
realised.